She was born Carin Axelina Hulda Fock in Stockholm in 1888. Her father Baron Carl Fock was a Swedish Army colonel, from a family who had emigrated from Westphalia. Her mother, Huldine Fock (née Beamish; b. 1860), was from an Anglo-Irish family famous for brewing Beamish and Crawfordstout in Cork. Her great-great grandfather William Beamish was one of the founders of Beamish and Crawford. Her British grandfather had served in Britain's Coldstream Guards. Carin's maternal grandmother founded the private religious sisterhood, Edelweiss Society. She was the fourth of five daughters; her sisters were Fanny von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1882-1956), Mary von Rosen (born 1886), Elsa, and Lily. Mary (1886–1967) was married to Count Eric von Rosen (1879–1948), one of the founding members of the Nationalsocialistiska Blocket ("National Socialist Bloc"), a Swedish National Socialist political party.

She became Carin von Kantzow upon her marriage in 1910 to a Swedish army officer, Baron Niels Gustav von Kantzow. Their only child, Thomas von Kantzow, was born in 1913.

In 1920, when she was estranged from her first husband, she met Hermann Göring at Rockelstad Castle while visiting her sister Mary. Four years her junior, he was working as a commercial pilot in Sweden for the short-lived airline Svensk Lufttrafik. He had flown her sister's husband Count Eric von Rosen to the castle. Göring fell in love with Carin instantly and started seeing her in Stockholm in spite of the scandal, for she was a separated woman with a young child. She became divorced from von Kantzow in December 1922.[1]

After their marriage on 3 January 1923 the Görings first lived in a house in the suburbs of Munich. Carin followed her husband and became a member of the Nazi Party.[2] When Göring was badly injured in the groin while marching alongside Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Carin transported him to Austria, then on to Italy, and nursed him back to health,[3] Carin and Göring's romantic love-story was used by Goebbel's propaganda machine and the couple toured around the nation to boost popularity.[1]

She suffered from tuberculosis during her later years. When her mother, Huldine Fock, died unexpectedly on 25 September 1931, it came as a great shock to the 42-year-old Carin. Although her health was still fragile, she went to Sweden to attend her mother's funeral.[4] Next day she suffered a heart attack in Stockholm. Upon this event, Göring also went and stayed there until she died of heart failure on 17 October 1931, four days prior to her 43rd birthday.[4][5]

Her death came as a great blow to Göring. He named the baronial hunting lodge he built from 1933 Carinhall, in her honour. It was there that he had her body re-interred from her original grave in Sweden, in a funeral attended by Adolf Hitler. He filled Carinhall with images of Carin. He also did the same in his flat in Berlin, where Göring created an altar in memory of her which remained even after he remarried in 1935.

After her death, Carin's older sister Fanny wrote a biography of her which quickly became a bestseller in Germany. By 1943 it had sold 900,000 copies. Carinhall was later demolished under Göring's orders as Soviet troops advanced in 1945. Carin's remains were later recovered by the Fock family, cremated and re-buried in Sweden. In 1991, remains were found that could also be Carin Göring's. They were sent to Sweden for identification. Evidence suggests that these new remains are of Carin Göring. She has now been reburied.[6]